


Too Much, Too Late

by ishiptheships



Series: Ling is too fuckin bi and poly to function [3]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Another post-greed-death fic, F/M, Here u go, M/M, Multi, There's some mature themes of sex in here but nothing explicit, it's sad but also cute?, so if ur looking for like smut this ain't it, the file name is called greed is dead au lol jk it's canon.docx
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-22 08:42:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14305008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishiptheships/pseuds/ishiptheships
Summary: Ling and Lan Fan's life after Greed's death in Xing.





	Too Much, Too Late

**Author's Note:**

> Sort of a sequel to stay. This was read once by my gf before i posted it and i THINK i fixed all teh typos but honestly if there are typos u probably know what i'm talking about. Greed doesn't make an appearance, but Greed is still there, u know what i mean

He was twenty-one. Ling didn’t have scars anymore.

No, he had scars. Lan Fan could trace them with her fingers on his skin as she lay beside him in his bed. The one on his hand, where he cut himself on a broken glass cup when he was seventeen; the one on his left forearm, where she accidentally sliced him with her automail arm while they sparred when he was nineteen; the one on his back, where one of the people of the court stabbed him with a small knife when he was twenty-two. Ling Yao, Emperor of Xing, had scars.

He didn’t have scars from before he was sixteen.

Those all had disappeared. The scar he had gotten when they skipped rope and he fell and split his chin when he was five; the scar he had gotten when she was practicing throwing her knives and she accidentally grazed his right thigh when he was eleven; the scar he had gotten when an assassin brought a knife to his neck when he was thirteen. Lan Fan closed her eyes. That scar was the most haunting and the most precious to her. He had almost died that day. Despite how red his throat was and how much blood left his body that day, he still lived.

After Greed, all of that disappeared. It was eerie to see Ling’s body after Greed had died. Emaculate. Everything was smooth, untouched. Lan Fan almost wanted to mark him so he could feel human again.

“Yeah it’s strange.” Ling had said when he saw himself in the mirror after the Promised Day. He said that dismissively, bags under his eyes. He was grieving at the time.  Within the hour, Ling had accidentally cut himself with a piece of paper. He stared at the cut as blood as it beaded at the opening of his flesh.

“My lord.” Lan Fan had to snap him out of his daze. He had barely looked up. She had gotten him a bandage.

Strange what five years could do to a man. It could mark him up, try to cut him down, and yet, Ling was still standing despite his injuries, despite all the assassination attempts.

And there he was, his back turned to her, shirtless. The impressions Greed had left on him never disappeared. He told her that that’s how _he_ always slept. Ling just got used to the habit. How odd—and intimate?—it must be to share the same skin with another.  She didn’t doubt their intimacy; Greed probably knew Ling just as much, even more, than she did. She pulled herself close to him and kissed his neck, right where that scar used to be.

He hummed softly. “Do you need to go?”

She nodded. She was already reaching for her clay mask, which laid bedside.

“Don’t be long.”

She kissed him in response.

 

***********

 

They found out he couldn’t have children.

Lan Fan waited outside a room while her Emperor met with the Yao Clansmen, angry voice carried out into the hallway. They were probably arguing about heirs. Ling was tired to seeing lovers that couldn’t conceive. It wasn’t their fault, of course. It was all him. Lan Fan closed her eyes.

“They should all be hung!”

Lan Fan heard and felt the vibration of Ling’s fist hitting the table. “Never. These women have done nothing wrong.”

Ling had told Lan Fan that Wrath was sterile due to his homunculus nature. It was unsure for a while whether Ling was the same. Lan Fan hadn’t dared to test the theory out; not for a while at least. She couldn’t afford to get pregnant, not when Ling was making so many changes to the country and there was animosity for him.

There were rumors of her being intimate with the Emperor, sneaking to his bed at night. The guards stationed outside his door tended to talk too much. And now that speech was a freedom for all, it wasn’t a punishable crime. Not that Lan Fan cared; she _was_ intimate with Ling.  The court and the guards just didn’t know that she started to go to his bed because of his nightmares and his grief after they first arrived back from Amestris. He needed comfort and Lan Fan provided that for him—them.  In a way, they both mourned.  Too many tears were shed in that bed.

“I don’t want to marry.” Ling had said one night. Ling was eighteen.  Lan Fan’s head was against his bare shoulder. It was rare that her shoulders were bare too, and she held him under the silk covers.  Her automail arm was cold and she kept that away from his skin.  “It doesn’t feel right...not without him at least.”

She had nodded. “What about…other possible partners? Would you want to try?”

There was a moment of silence.

“I don’t know.” There was a tired sigh and a shaky breath. Lan Fan sat up to kiss his temple, then his left hand. He had such delicate hands. She brushed his face and caught a tear.

He tried though. He took all kinds of lovers: women brought to him by the clansmen, and men who were mostly snuck in by a group of close, loyal guards. Lan Fan was relieved he was trying. He had jokingly (maybe not so jokingly looking back) asked her to join some nights, but she always refused. Not that she didn’t want to, but most nights she had a job to do.

It was never enough. These people weren’t made to last. They were there as extremities, toys the Emperor could play with. Ling didn’t want that. There was one man, however (Lan Fan did not join—she didn’t think the man was attracted to her anyways), and for a while Ling was happier. He was from the court and after a while, the two started to grow closer together. They did all sleep in the same bed some nights—Ling in the middle. It didn’t last long; that man gave Ling the scar on his back. Ling was twenty-two. Ling, heartbroken, had to put the man in prison for treason.

There were too many lovers for at least one of them to _not_ get pregnant. Lan Fan and Ling could read the Dragon’s Pulse once a new heart started beating in the castle in its mother’s womb. There were none during Ling’s reign. Once there was more evidence of Ling’s sterility, they decided to test it out for themselves. He was twenty, she was twenty-one. Lan Fan never conceived. Not that it mattered; it was for the best anyway.

As for the lovers, they came and went. None of them truly stayed. Not like Greed.

 

***********

 

Ling was no longer immortal.

He aged, like the rest of them. When the Elrics visited them when Ling was twenty-eight and the country had settled, Ling looked like the two Amestrian Boys, more mature, broad shouldered, bulkier, the start of wrinkles in the corners of their eyes. Ed and Al had way more smile lines around their eyes though. Ling had a few, and Ling looked more tired.

Lan Fan distanced herself from the rest of them. She was a guard.

“Take off your mask, Lan Fan.” Alphonse laughed. “We’re among family.” He had married Mei a few years ago, and everyone knew Ling and Lan Fan’s relationship. Al and Mei lived in the Cheng clan together. He spoke fluent Xingese, which impressed Lan Fan. His diction was good.

She replied back in her tongue. She was amused at the other brother’s confused expression. “Not if have a job to do.”

Ling caught her eye. There was sort of longing there that wanted her by his side, but there were boundaries that didn’t need to be crossed. Not outside the bedroom. Sometimes he would speak to her in Amestrian, just so the other guards and clansmen couldn’t understand what he was saying to her. She could never reply back (not in public at least). It wouldn’t have worked though, with Amestrian natives as their audience.

There were always moments like those: small longing moments that Ling wanted to have her by his side, to boast about her, to shower her with gifts that an Emperor’s wife would have received. She wouldn’t have to work for the rest of her life. Greed really did leave an impression on him—to give treat his possessions with all the love and care in the word—or was that always there?

But he was hers as well. Protecting Ling was her choice. And he respected that.

“I know my worth.” She had said to him one night after he discussed raising her status. He was twenty-five. He had knelt in front of her to show his respect (absurd). It wasn’t a proposal, but it was close and just as meaningful. It warmed her heart, but the emperor could not marry a guard. He couldn’t marry her without her quitting what she wanted to do. “I have a job I need to do, and I know what I am to you. I don’t need pride.  I don’t need gifts. Do not kneel for me.”

“I don’t need pride either.” Ling had gritted his teeth, anger suddenly rising from his chest. “Just because I am emperor, I cannot show my love--”

Just as he rose from his knees, Lan Fan could barely register the noise that flew from the open window that she had entered in. It hit Ling in the shoulder. He hissed and grabbed the dart that landed deeply into his shoulder. His eyes started to roll back.

She was so fucking careless that night. She left the window open, she had removed her mask, she had sheathed her automail blade. If she didn’t let her guard down, maybe Ling would have not…

He lived but not without a cost. It almost took him two months to recover from the poison. He was almost too weak to do anything. He almost died.

“I’m alive, Lan Fan,” was the first thing he said when she woke up at his bedside after a two week coma. Her face was stained with tears.

“This wouldn’t have happened if he was here.” Lan Fan said what was obvious. “I wouldn’t have kept my guard down. He could have healed you.”

Ling didn’t reply. He slept for days afterwards.  When he woke up again, she wasn’t there. She was too busy protecting the Emperor from the rooftops.

 

***********

 

Ling had lost a part of himself.

Only a few weeks after they had returned from Amestris is when Ling fully confessed his feelings for the homunculus that resided in his body. He had nightmares, mumbled to himself, cried often, almost never smiled when he and Lan Fan were alone. She was the only one he could really show his pain to. Probably because she felt it as well. They had both bled for him. He was sixteen, she seventeen.

After the first night she spent in his bed, holding him, discussing what could have been, how their lives would have been different if Greed was just _there_ , he opened up more.

“I started to…well…you know.” Ling cringed. He had just turned seventeen. “I think that period of time where we traveled with Edward, Heinkel, and Darius. That’s when I started to...like him in that way.”

She had made tea. He rested his head on her shoulder and she sipped the jasmine steam from the cup. She held the cup with her metal arm to avoid burning herself. She liked her tea scalding hot. “What about him? How did you know he felt the same way?”

“I guess I sort of had a feeling of it…right when we left Central? I could never read his mind, but he could always read mine. I could sense it though. He probably knew I felt that way about him too.” Ling closed his eyes. “I didn’t really know for sure until Promised Day.”

Lan Fan stared down at him. He had never said those words since the day itself happened.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I called him out on his _shit_.”  Ling said “shit” in Amestrian. Lan Fan almost laughed. “I said that all he wanted was friends. Then I felt that same feeling from him that I had been having for months. That…anxiousness. And warmth.” Ling frowned. “He also forced me to live. He saved my life. So I guess that means he cared.”

Lan Fan’s heart sank. They had only a few hours of knowing for sure. If only Greed survived to be there to kiss him. She did the job for him. She kissed his forehead. “He cared.”

Ling smiled sadly. “Too little, too late.”

She shook her head. “No. Too much. Too late.”

She would whisper that to him at night when he cried, when he missed Greed the most. He had gotten a taste of who he could have truly become and what could have happened to the three of them. It was taken away. Just like her arm, just like her grandfather.

Every “what if” shed tears from Ling’s eyes. What if Greed was here to react to that goofy thing Ling just did? What if Greed was here to arm wrestle Lan Fan? What if Greed was there to kiss both their lips passionately and worship their bodies with no care in the world? What if Greed was _alive_? Lan Fan found herself crying with him.

Sometimes they didn’t cry at all.

“I think you’re beautiful.” He would say before leaning in to kiss her temple. He was seventeen. She would flick him with her warm hand playfully. He would respond with a laugh and a “Seriously!!” He loved her strong body, a body for function, not aesthetics. She would find out later when he was eighteen, she nineteen, that he would worship her broad arms and shoulders, abs, and thighs. Kisses, caresses that trailed up and down her body. He would often trace the muscles in her back before proceeding between her thighs. He was a hopeless romantic sometimes.

“Wouldn’t you want a soft woman to lie in bed with?” Lan Fan laughed and rolled her eyes. She already knew the answer.

“You’re plenty soft.” He would kiss her face. She highly doubted that (it was the truth—she was all muscle), but she let him do it anyway.

“And a man?” One day she asked. She asked when he was seventeen.

He tried to silence her with another kiss, but the kiss spoke his thoughts. He missed him. He wanted to experience Greed the way he was experiencing her as well. Lan Fan’s heart ached. She barely knew the homunculus, but there was a part of her that told her that maybe she would have enjoyed his company.

“I love you.” He would say after the small hiccups escaped Lan Fan’s throat, his gasps filled the room, and the ghost of hands clutching hair, bed sheets, and each other’s skin lingered where they had touched on each other’s bodies. Lan Fan never noticed how beautiful it sounded in Xingese until he said it. 

He kissed her throat. There were marks there and he gently brushed his lips over them. “ _I love you._ ” He said it again in Amestrian. It was superfluous, and almost made Lan Fan roll her eyes. It didn’t have to be said; they already knew the love they shared. But it was nice to hear.

She, however, said what he _needed_ to hear. “And you love Greed, too.”

Ling couldn’t make eye contact. He buried his head in her shoulder. His eyes watered.

“Ling.” It was just the two off them. She said his name. “It’s okay.”

That night was just as tearful as the first time she held him.


End file.
